A Walensee walk — Weesen to Quinten

As I glanced at my GPS watch on Saturday afternoon, a moment after it finished recharging, I fancied I heard a snatch of this drifting in through the open balcony door.

The watch was last stopped on September 29 at 15.15pm. It was now March 29 at 15.15, precisely six months — to the minute — since I’d tottered across the finish line in Berlin. Six months since I’d done any exercise worthy of a sports watch. If indeed Berlin had been worthy of such a device: perhaps a calendar would have been more appropriate. After 6 months of strategic ignorance about how long it had taken  me to stumble the 26 miles, yesterday the watch blurted out its shameful secret before I’d the chance to swipe the data into permanent darkness.

The first two months of stasis can be excused. My sick note is pretty solid, stapled to the 4-figure medical bills for MRI scans, spinal cortisone injections and sessions with a beaming German physiotherapist called Martin who talked loudly about Buddhism and Borussia Dortmund in the hope of concealing my agonised sobs from nervous patients waiting their turn in the corridor.

Just as painful as the herniated disc itself was the decision to cancel our trip to Australia to meet up with Mr and Mrs MLCMM and Suzie and Ash, missing the chance of taking part in the near-vertical half marathon that is the Hobart Point to Pinnacle. I tried to seek advice from my local doctor, but he was too busy to see me on the day I’d made it to the surgery. Instead, I chatted to his wife who had been gratifyingly blasé on the subject. “Oh, go if you want”, she had advised, with a shrug and slight wave of her hand. “They probably have doctors in Australia in case you wake up paralysed.” Then she added: “As long as you are not lifting anything heavy, like a suitcase, you may just be lucky.”

I should explain that the rather wonderful Krisztina is also a doctor at the same surgery, and that she had uttered these words with tongue firmly in cheek. I hope she wouldn’t have risked offering such a verbal prescription to a non-English chap. Not everyone would have appreciated her wicked gift of irony.

Further implications include the London Marathon 2014 (April) place being deferred to 2015. It means relinquishing a rather cool race number: 1414. The Berlin 2014 (September) place, hastily purchased during the euphoric afterglow of the 2013 event, is starting to look like a wasted investment, though not because it’s impossible to get in better shape in the six months available. It coincides with something else I’ve signed up to, which I may or may not have the courage to reveal at some point. Given my shocking corpulence, and the need to avoid another spinal trap, a better race target would be an autumn half marathon. But for the moment, the only circles on my race calendar are London in April 2015 and The Moyleman, the previous month — though my participation in the latter will be restricted to marshalling duties.

The extended post-Berlin recuperation began with the firm post-marathon tradition of wiping clean my summer pre-race food blacklist. Result? Entirely predictable: 32 pounds of wobbly blubber that hadn’t been there on marathon morning. It meant that the symbolic first step on this thousand mile journey towards London 2015, a first decent walk of the season, was much harder than it should have been.

Last year I made a start on the Swiss Panorama walk. The first three legs were written about here while the 4^th, from Urnasch to Schwagalp wasn’t. But Schwagalp is where I’ll take up the baton, and the tale, when I set off again shortly. In the meantime, some limbering up was required.

Unlike my solitary rustic dips last summer, this time I had company, in the shape of a delightful colleague from the UK, working over here for a few weeks. She asked for ideas to entertain a friend on a weekend visit. We’ve had an unseasonably warm winter here, much to the chagrin of my ski-ing workmates, and with the weekend weather forecast looking more like early summer than early spring, the suggestion had to be a walk. The friend had a plane to catch at 6.30pm, so I had to find something that we could polish off by mid-afternoon.

The great MLCMM will recall the August 1^st outing to the far end of Walensee, one of the loveliest lakes in all of Switzerland, and conveniently local. On that baking day last summer we were at a farmhouse, high on a hill at the far end of this gorgeously hazy canyon, above Walenstadt, taking part in the traditional Swiss National Day bonzer brunch, when the tomato-faced farmers provide food  and entertainment for the holidaying masses.

Yesterday we were at the near end of the lake, arriving in Weesen at about 10:45. The set designers had done a great job, turning it into a charming, typically Swiss town with the usual huge wooden houses and chalets, many of them sporting the Swiss flag.

We parked up and set off. When the tarmac ran out we were still on paths good enough (unfortunately) to accommodate small cars and motorbikes sufficiently brave to negotiate the narrow lakeside route, though the narrowing trail shook them off after 3 kilometres or so. From that point on, the north side of the lake, where we were, is inaccessible to traffic. To get anywhere, you walk — or you reach one of the two points where the boat stops. We were heading for one of them, Quinten, though at this time of the year, the boats are few and far between. Just one service was available yesterday to take us back to Weesen, so it was essential we reached our destination by 3pm.

The views will leave you gaping from the start. The north side is a massive wall of rock, underscored by the undulating lakeside path along which we tramped. Across the beautiful turquoise sheen of the Walensee, the south side is dominated by the ski resort of Flumserberg and a string of sister mountains. Most had done the decent thing and kept a patina of snow for us to silently wonder at as we made our way along the dwindling track. Just once we lost sight of the panorama, when the rocky path drew us through a dank tunnel that would have been too opaque to safely negotiate without the natural illumination provided by the occasional man-made porthole. These three or four mini-tunnels provided ravishing glimpses of the lake and the distant shore.

Then came a steep stretch of perhaps 3 kilometres. It shouldn’t have been that hard, but 6 months of inertia chose this moment to seek its revenge. It wasn’t a cosh from my blind side that floored me but a slow and gradual turning of a screw – a combination of hot sun and relentless ascent. By the time we reached the summit of the path, I was panting like the proverbial steam train. Shamefully knackered, I found a bench to squat on for a few very grand minutes of relief. As I let the stress of my unfitness drain from me and dribble back down the steep path, I made the mistake of thinking that was the end of the task. It wasn’t.

The long path down to Quinten is narrow and treacherous with its rocky, pockmarked, tree-rooted, slippery stretches of lethal scree. On one side we had a wall of rock, and on the other, a vertical drop down the hill to the lake. Parts of the track had stout wire handholds drilled into the rock, but I didn’t find these reassuring. Yes, they increased our safety – but they featured along the worst stretches only, so the appearance up ahead of another length of this makeshift handrail was like a sign saying: WATCH OUT! THIS BIT WILL FREAK YOU!

I’m exaggerating the track’s intrinsic risk. A fitter, slimmer me would have had far less trouble. But the tough upward hike had exhausted most of my natural resources, already-depleted by the six-month layoff. This wasn’t just a wake-up call, it was a bucket of icy water emptied over my peacefully slumbering running aspirations. The worrying part is that it was more than simple tiredness.  Halfway down the rocky descent, I realised my legs were rapidly jellifying, to the point where I couldn’t be certain that the next extended step downwards wouldn’t see the leg collapse beneath me. Bouncing down the track a few feet on my arse would have been the best case scenario. Worse would have been to vanish over the side of the ravine, followed by a trailing scream and eventually, a mighty, and far distant [splash!].

We survived.

Quinten is a lovely jumble of buildings scattered down a tiered slope leading to the lake, embraced by a small patch of pinot noir vines. Above, the massive rampart of rock that runs the length of the lake.

The boat was due within minutes, so we didn’t have time to squander at the single open restaurant, even if the prospect of a cold beer and a missed boat seemed almost worth the prospect of the 3 week wait until the start of the summer season boat schedule. Instead, we gratefully clambered aboard the small boat for the 10 minutes glide across this most peaceful and pretty of Swiss lakes.

In a country splattered with natural jewels, I’m lucky that this one, the Walensee, is barely 25 minutes from home. I’ve been here many times before, but the walk from Weesen to Quinten donated yet another vantage point. It also opened my eyes to the awful state of my fitness, and how much work I have to do. Next time, I’ll aim to pack the version with the smaller gut and stronger legs.

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